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In their season opener meet on Saturday the Syracuse Orange cross country teams cruised to easy wins over the host Colgate Raiders. The Orange women took the first 9 spots while the men had the top 3 and 6 of the top 10. Leading the way were Abigail Spiers and Nathan Henderson.
Spiers crossed the line in 17:40 a second in front of Mary Malone who was closely followed by freshmen Ellie Lawlor. Kelsey Potts, Julien Webster, Maggie Toczko, Emma Wilson, Eva Scott and Olivia Elston completed the Syracuse sweep with Kayli Jones adding a 12th place finish. Other than Malone the other Orange runners are all in their 1st or 2nd seasons and they will be looked upon to contribute now and in the future for Syracuse.
Henderson took the win for the 6.4k course in a time of 21:09 comfortably ahead of teammates Stephen Schulz and Joey Eovaldi. Rounding out the competition for Syracuse were Declan Kottmeier in 5th, Matt Cavallaro in 8th and Pierce Miller in 9th.
The first meet of the year serves as a bit of pre-season for cross country as results are not considered for at-large qualifying criteria. The season truly begins for Syracuse this Friday afternoon when they travel to compete in the Harry Groves Spiked Shoe Invitational hosted by the Penn State Nittany Lions. We’ll see a lot more of the expected top 7 for each Orange squad as the season truly begins.